“None at all.”
“Well, perhaps you should have. Because he isn’t dead.”
It is immediate and perfect: the way the abbess now stares at her, the expression on her face changing not one iota. “Dead?” Her voice is strangely light. “No, of course he isn’t dead.”
“However, it seems that the knife wounds to his face and throat will make it hard for him to take up the post at Parma. If, that is, it should ever have been offered.”
Zuana feels her mouth dry. She lifts the glass and takes a sip of the wine. Her hand is very steady. Across the room the abbess’s face remains impassive. Then suddenly she gives a sigh: light, almost playful.
“As always, you do yourself an injustice, Zuana. It is not I who am remarkable but you. I do believe that if you had been born into a better family you might be ruling this convent now.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, such a thing is not impossible.” There is a pause. “Indeed, with the right people behind you it might yet happen. Imagine the great dispensary you could build then.”
“I am happy with the one I have,” she says quietly.
“Yes, I believe you are.”
It is strange, but there is almost a sense of calm inside the room. How amazing, Zuana thinks. When confronted with such danger to herself, this woman still seems at ease, confident. Does she feel it always? When she is praying? When she is in the confessional? How early would she have had to catch Father Romero to be sure that he was sleeping through this admission?
“It seems now I must ask you about your sources, Zuana.”
“I had a visitor.”
“So I heard. Who was she?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, yes, it matters. My nuns do not accept visits from just anyone.”
“What? Do your rules now squeeze harder than Umiliana’s?”
The abbess stares at her, then sits back heavily in her chair, her natural grace deserting her for an instant. This time there is no smoothing of creases or removal of fluff from her skirts.
“I did not have anything to do with it,” she says at last. “It was never—” She breaks off. “It was not my—well, sometimes one does not always have control over what one unleashes. But it was never—never—what I wished.”
Zuana puts down her glass of wine. She has no idea whether she believes her.
“Do I have your permission to treat the novice?”
“And if you do, what will you tell her?”
“That he did not desert her.” She pauses. “I believe knowing this will lessen her despair.”
“No. No, I cannot allow that.”
With the exception, perhaps, of the girl herself, the woman in front of her is the nearest Zuana has come to a friend in her life. She has admired, respected, enjoyed, even at moments sought to emulate her. Most of all, she has obeyed her. For this is the first and most powerful rule of the Benedictine order: to obey one’s abbess in all things.
“And what if she continues to refuse to eat? What if she starves herself to death?”
“Then to make sure we do not lose half her dowry we will just have to arrange for her to take her vows before she does so.” To Zuana’s astonishment, the abbess laughs. “You look shocked! Yet those are the words you wanted to hear from me, yes? Proof that as your abbess I care only about money, not souls? Oh, Zuana, do you know me so little? Is that what they say about me, this small army that is raised up now behind Umiliana? That I think more about reputation than I do salvation? Is that how it is?”
Zuana does not reply. There is nothing to be gained from false comfort now.
“Well, in some ways they are right. There may be times when my methods seem cruel. But believe this, if you believe anything. The battle we are fighting now is not just for the honor of the convent or the influence of one family over another. If Umiliana wins, if she creates enough noise and rebellion to bring the inspectors in, it will affect everyone.
“After they have stripped us of our income, after they have walled us up, even in our own parlatorio, after they have banned Scholastica’s plays and taken away the instruments from the choir orchestra, they will come for you. You, who have found such unexpected sanctuary inside these walls. They will not care about your remedies and your herbs. They will break the bottles in your dispensary and take away the books in your library, and after that they will find the others, the ones that are hidden in your chest. That is what my cruelty is trying to avoid. That—the great and the small of it—is what is at stake here.”
Zuana feels her heart moving fast against her rib cage. She will not think that far ahead. No, she could not live without her books or remedies, in a convent ruled by Umiliana. Yet how can it be acceptable to so offend God in order to be able to continue to serve Him? She, who can solve the most difficult riddles of the body, feels lost in the face of such complexity.
“I am still the abbess of this convent, Suora Zuana. And until I am not you must obey me, or I must impose penance on you.” She pauses. “As I have done already on Umiliana. Which, of course, was exactly what she wanted me to do.” She sighs. “Think of it: the abbess’s enemy and her favorite both lying in the doorway of the refectory for the other nuns to walk over. What a gift it will be to her.”
But this last appeal to the sister who used to be her confidante is too little, too late.
“If you will excuse me, Madonna Abbess, I must return to my dispensary.”
She gets up and moves to the door. The abbess watches her go.
“Zuana,” she says, as she reaches the door, “she is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AT SUPPER, SUORA Umiliana accepts only scraps, with a generous layer of wormwood sprinkled on top. The rest of the choir nuns and novices watch nervously as she carries it with her to the table. Once there, she chews each mouthful as if it were filled with honey, a smile playing around her lips. While it is forbidden to look at anything but one’s plate during the meal, it is almost impossible for people to keep their eyes off her. Serafina does not even need to worry about squirreling away her food at this meal, since no one is looking at her. Except Zuana.
The meal and the reading—which no one hears a word of, though Scholastica has been especially picked for her strong voice—finally end, and the novice mistress rises and kneels at the feet of the abbess before going over to take her place in the doorway. She takes a while to get herself down on the floor. While she is adept enough at kneeling, it seems harder for her to lie prone. But then she is not a young woman anymore, and bones at this age become brittle and if broken heal badly.
The abbess leaves the room first, graceful as ever, bringing her left foot to rest on Umiliana’s robe but carefully avoiding her flesh. In her wake, each and every choir nun and novice makes it her business to walk over rather than on the prostrate old nun, though whether it is out of respect or fear for her it is hard to tell. Either way, as convent martyrdoms go it is a fairly painless business. Now that the lines have been drawn, it seems, everyone is nervous about what might happen next.
That night it takes a long time for the convent to settle. In her cell Zuana turns over the hourglass and watches the sand fall. How many times in her life has she sat here, trying to wash away the business of the day in readiness for the prayer before sleep? She has always envied those sisters who live lightly in the world, giving themselves up easily to the silence and stillness of God’s love. She needs that stillness more than ever tonight, for how can she take the next step in her life without His guidance?
Her first spiritual guide, the novice mistress who had shown her paintings in the chapel, had alerted her early to the pitfalls of intoxication with her work. “Your knowledge brings you great solace, Zuana. But knowledge alone has no substance. Our founder, the great Saint Benedict himself, understood that well enough. Let not your heart be puffed up with exaltation. Everyone that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted”